I'm Laughing Now
by Sepik
Summary: Jack's POV directly after The Parting Of The Ways ends. Just a little something I came up with for English class. All reviews, including flames, welcomed.


I'm Laughing Now

Disclaimer: _fan_fiction

Author's Note: Okay, I feel this needs some explaining. Basically, I was given a writing assignment in English where I had to write from the point of view of someone (anyone) and do it as either a narrative or a short story. Or poem. Or something creative. Anyways. So, I figured, I would do it about Captain Jack Harkness. Because Jack is awesome like that. And I have to admit that it didn't turn out that well... I don't think it's in character, but I am curious to see what other people think. This is the second time I have made Jack the center of a writing assignment in school. Hopefully that number will increase. This takes place directly after Jack sees the TARDIS dematerialize at the end of The Parting Of The Ways.

.oO0Oo.

I can't help but look away as I realize it's gone. They've left me. _He_'_s_ left me. The familiar but odd noise echoes throughout the empty corridors of the Game Station. He's left me! He's left me here in this place where I'm going to die. Where I'm going to die and no one will ever be able to even identify my body because I don't belong here. I don't belong in this time!

He's _left_ me! He's gone and left me after everything we've been through. And where is Rose, hm? Is he just going to go and leave her, too? But how did the TARDIS manage to come back in the first place? He said he'd sent her home, where she'd be safe. And I _know_ she doesn't know how to make it work. What's just happened?

Without even realizing it, my eyes begin to burn. But there aren't going to be any tears. After all, I've been through worse. I think. I'm not sure which can be considered the more cruel thing to happen to a person. Having two years of your memories stolen by the very organization you've dedicated your life to, or having the only two people who you care about abandon you? It's a hard choice. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to cry. I don't even think I can anymore.

Slowly, I walk towards the spot it just disappeared from. When I reach it, I let out a slow and shaky breath. It's gone. And it's not coming back. Something just feels so final about this moment I'm stuck in. I just _know_ he's not coming back. Yet I'm waiting to hear that familiar nosie again, and not just in the form of an echo.

I stand in that spot for who knows how long, my mind numb. As far as I know, it could have been days that I stood there, waiting for the Doctor and Rose to come back with grins on their faces, explaining that it had only been a minute for them. It's hard to judge time when the only light around me is the artificial glow seemingly unique to space stations.

It takes the lights to flicker before I come out of my trance, before I finally blink hard enough for my mind to start to thaw. I'm Jack Harkness, _Captain_ Jack Harkness. I can con my way through anything, or to anyone, for that matter. I've just been left on a piece of metal floating through space attached to a planet because of gravity. Nothing big, or new, when I actually think about it. Now Pompeii with a time ship refusing to work... now that's a tight spot.

I can feel it happening, and I'm refusing to acknowledge it. That odd defense mechanism I've seemed to develop where I stop feeling, where I stop noticing it's happening to me. Instead, I just act. And that's what I'm doing right now as I casually walk to the controls to make sure I can keep alive in this stupid station just long enough to be rescued.

There is almost no power left. Most of the air has been vented. The force field around the top of the station has drained too much power. I have a day at the most before I either freeze or burn to death, depending on if the sun is facing me or not. And the chances of sending out a signal to the planet below are none. It's only really the level I'm on that has any life support left thanks to a few strategically placed explosions. The computer has moved all the air to where I am. I guess it must sense me with its nice little life signs detector or something, so _now_ it's trying to protect me. Now I can't even go to any of the other levels to get food or water, or to see if they're any survivors. But I know there aren't any.

I'm not even supposed to be alive.

I'm laughing now, and I can't even stop. It's not because I've run out of air yet. No, that kind of laughing will come later. This is a sickening, gleeful sort of laughter that comes from my belly, and is full of mirth. I finally realize it. This little taunting fact that I've been trying to grasp my entire life... I think I finally understand it. It's the same sort of feeling from when I was a kid, and people called me stupid for believing in the legend about Time Agents. It's that same kind of scorn, just this time inner, that I felt when on the day they released me from that hospital, and they told me I had been in a coma for two years. It hadn't taken long to figure out that apparently the Agency can swipe memories, as well as other things. I'm not even sure of how old I am! It's that same kind of hate I've felt my entire life. I get it now, I really do. No one _cares_. No one will _ever_ care. If it's a choice between me or anyone else, I will always be the one to pay. I don't know why, but I finally get it. The Doctor and Rose kept me from figuring it out for a little while, but now I get it. Now I really really get it. So I laugh because it's just so _funny_ that now, of all times, I finally _get it_!

And I'm going to die now. There's not even a way to send out a signal to get help. I know the humans are probably in such a mess down on the planet at this point that no one is going to bother sending up a ship to look for any survivors. There aren't any survivors. _I'm_ not even a survivor.

This has got to be a purgatory. Right? What else would explain it? The Doctor and Rose would never leave me here. No matter what. What am I thinking? Am I in denial? There's a part of me that wants to ignore what the rest of me is thinking. That I'm alone again. How can I be alone? I thought we were friends! More than that! But now they're gone, and I'm obviously going to die. I've already died once, right? So _is_ this death? It has to be. People can't come back from the dead. _Nothing_ can do that. Not even anyone. Not even the Doctor.

I try and access the videos of what happened, and all of them are wiped. It has _got_ to be on purpose because it's not static. They didn't get deleted, either. It's like the records recorded nothing.

I wait there in front of the control console for a while longer. I suddenly realize I have less than an hour left before there's no power, or maybe it was no oxygen? I'm not bothering to figure out which is going to kill me first. I've got less than an hour, and I haven't gotten hungry, or sleepy, or anything. I'm just existing. This doesn't make any sense. What _happened?_

I'm trying so hard to avoid going to that corridor where it happened. I'm afraid to go. I try to make a list of things I like. I've never had a favorite for anything. I would always tell people I can't have a favorite if I haven't tried it all. Maybe that's one of the things that sparked me to become a Time Agent? That I've never been satisfied with what I already know and have, because in the past and future there's even more to try and do and see. I was once told that I had the makings of a Time Agent. Is that what they meant?

And now I'm in that corridor. There is dust on the floor, and just seeing it makes me shudder. On the wall is the faint imprint of a ray or beam of some kind. Even though I don't look close I can still see the outline of a man. Suddenly, my internal body clock hits me. Seventeen minutes. The scene that I've been trying to forget plays in my mind, and I watch helplessly as the memory becomes real things and a real person standing there before me.

My guns don't work so I throw them to the side. The Daleks come closer and then they just stop. I'm backed up to the wall. A voice in mind shouts that I'm going to die. Yet another voice says it's okay, because Rose is safe and the Doctor will succeed. And then they shout at me 'Exterminate!' They slowly pronounce every syllable. I watch as my memory shows me my own response. 'Yeah, I kind of figured that.'

I watch as they shoot that stupid ray at me, and I get thrown back against the wall and die. Did it hurt? Yes. But then what happened? I watch attentively, and wait to find out. I blink, and the phantom figures from my own memory and my own mind are gone. All that's left is the dust and the imprint. I remember that I only have a few more minutes left to live.

I wander over to one of the only other rooms available to me. It's an observation room. I get to see Earth one last time. The planet is blackened with smog and those constant storms that force everyone to stay inside. There aren't any ships coming. The moon is on the other side of the planet, and blocked by its bulk. All I get to do now is wait to die, and watch a dying planet.

I told the Doctor that I never doubted him, and that I never would. I'm doubting him now. I'm doubting who he is, who I thought he was. He left me here. Rose left me here. Why?

When I died, there was nothing. I didn't see _anything_. There was this golden light all of a sudden, and then I took that breath of air into an aching chest.

And there was this singing...

I know I'm going to die. I know it's for the second time. I don't know how. I don't know why. But now the question is... will I stay dead?


End file.
